Sisters
by Midnight Callwel
Summary: Elena, Caroline and Bonnie leave Mystic Falls behind them once and for all.


AN: I wrote this for a prompt over on LJ, and it's the first fanfic I have written in a long time, so I hope you enjoy it

* * *

They pack their bags and leave. They can't stay. Not anymore, not after all that happened, after everything and everyone that was lost. There are ghosts in Mystic Falls, not the kind of ghosts that walk and talk, the other kind, the worse kind.

They don't take much with them. There isn't a whole lot that they want to hold on to, a lot that they want to remember. They already have too much that they can't forget. They pile into Elena's car, and leave town without looking back.

...

None of them can sleep easy. Bonnie has nightmares of Jeremy's death, of Rebekah ripping his hand off and his heart out as they watched helplessly. She cries out as Rebekah advances, dropping his body to the ground. She wakes up with a start, her scars throbbing painfully. They are a reminder from the spirits, a way to garauntee she won't ever forget what she did.

...

They have breakfast in a road-side motel. They've been away from home for a month, and they've spent a good part of it on the road. It seems that they can never get far enough, no matter how much they drive. They eat silently. They seem to spend alot of time in silence, and even Caroline is subdued. Elena wonders if she'll ever be the way she used to. Maybe, just maybe, she'll be back to her old self in a decade or two, with the pain of Tyler magnified the way it was by her vampire status. She can't even remember the last time she saw Caroline smile.

...

Elena feels guilt. She wallows in it, drowns in it. She sees the faces of everyone who's died everywhere she looks, and she feels even worse when she thinks of those who haven't, because after all, it's over for the deceased, but the living still suffer. She tries not to think about Stefan and Damon, how it was her who made them come back to this doomed town, and how they had lost everything for her, because of her. How she left them behind, asking them to leave her alone. She knows that she did what she did to survive, but she also knows it was wrong.

What's even worse is that she knows, deep down, that is _all _because of her. None of this would have happened if it wasn't for her. Maybe, it would have been better if she had just died in that car crash along with her parents. That way Damon would have just rode into town and tried to open the tomb with Bonnie's grams who would have trapped him in there with the rest of them. Caroline would still be human, Bonnie would still have her grams, Jeremy and Jenna would be alive and have each other, Tyler would still be a jackass, but a very much alive one, Matt would mourn and move on with his life with his sister, Jeremy would go through depression but then he would go on with his life, because he was a strong person and he could do that, no matter who he lost, Stefan would have Lexi and Lexi and her boyfriend would still have their true love and Klaus would still be nothing more than a very, very powerful vampire who carted his family around in caskets instead of a hybrid who had massacred wolf packs so that he would be a little less lonely. Elena imagines all this, and even though everyone would be so much happier and well-off and _alive_, it doesn't sit right with her, because Damon would be trapped and starving and in pain, and he doesn't deserve that.

None of them deserved any of this.

...

Caroline has a hard time brething sometimes. She remembers Tyler and her father and her mother and Matt and everyone else, and she doesn't know what she's doing here. Before, it's always been about surviving and pulling thorugh and making it out the other end of the dark tunnel, but what is it now, now that they've survived?

It's been more than six months, and they still haven't been able to find a place to settle down, but then again, what is six months when you can live forever?

Thoughts like this are what remind her that Bonnie isn't immortal, and that fact is what makes it hard to look at Bonnie sometimes. She looks at Bonnie, and she knows that she can't bear to lose her too, but that she will eventually, because if you live long enough you lose everyone. She loves Elena to pieces, but she still can't help that feeling she gets when she looks at her and knows that in about seventy-five, eighty years, Elena will be the only person she has left.

...

Bonnie doesn't tell anyone how she feels now that her powers, like so many other things that used to hers, are gone. She can't feel the earth or the sky or the flames anymore, and it's a huge, empty void inside of her, a void that the spirits of the witches created to punish for her upsetting the balance of nature over and over again, even when she had the power to fix things instead. She never was regretful of what she had done, but she doesn'T really know how to feel anymore. The void eats at her inside.

...

One of the things that pains Elena the most is that Matt is all alone. He refused their offer to come with them, to leave Mystic Falls behind. He had told her that he couldn't leave, that they had done too much damage, and someone needed to be there to help fix and rebuild. Mystic Falls was his home. He hadn't said it, but Elena knows he can't be with them, not when he is the only one who was normal, and she doesn't really want to take him away from somewhere where he can be just that. He can actually have something that resembles a life in the wreckage that is Mystic Falls, despite everything that happened.

...

Caroline dreams about Klaus sometimes, and wonders if she could have made a difference. She wonders if he would have changed if she had let him. Maybe, just maybe, she could have changed him the way Elena had changed Damon, not completely, but enough for him to have chosen a diffrent path. Maybe she could have changed him enough to save someone, if not everybody. A voice inside her that sounds a lot like Tyler tells her that it isn't fair, but she can't help but blame herself a little bit for what happened.

...

They celebrate Bonnie's birthday, but it's bittersweet at best. They blow up baloons and buy cake and romantic comedies and ice-cream and lock themselves into a motel room and try to have a girls night like they used to, back before all of this. They sit close together, and it's only for a moment, but thet lose themselves in the warmth of their friendship, the only survivor of the war. That one moment is enough to give them hope.

...

Elena wants to go back sometimes. She wants to go back and see what everyone is doing and what happened. She wants to visit the graves of her family and friends. She wants to know what Damon and Stefan are doing, see if they are still there, but she can't. They promised each other that they wouldn't, and even if they hadn't she has a feeling that she couldn't make it more than halfway there.

...

Five years down the road, they still haven't found somewhere worthy of calling home. They probably never will, not in the next few decades, at least. They're strong and they'll make it through, but some wounds take time to heal.

Bonnie finds someone she wants to know, someone she thinks she could love, and she tells them to leave her behind. They don't want to at first, but they also know that she wants them gone before she starts her life. She wants a life without magic or werewolves or vampires.

They leave her behind.

...

Caroline wonders if they'll ever run into Katherine or the Salvatores or some other vampire they used to know. They don't for the first few decades, which are spent travelling, and have some moments of actual fun as the scars start to fade. She's almost at the point where she doesn't think of Tyler every other hour, and they let loose with Elena, going on a sort of year long bender, only they aren't always drunk. It's more of a year-long party, and they take copious amounts of alcohol, but never enough to forget. Forgetting would be wrong, and impossible, no matter how much they drank.

They go to Europe, and Caroline insists that they go to the Hermitage Museum in Russia. She spends a long time looking at the landscapes, driven by a curiosity that she can't explain. Elena doesn't say anything, deciding that Caroline will tell her if she wants.

...

Slowly, Bonnie starts to see the loss of her magic as a gift rather than a curse. She doesn't want this life for her children, and even though she knows that they might end up with her powers, she also knows that they will grow up in a world different than hers, a place free of spells and curses and things that go bump in the night.

...

Caroline and Elena see the wonders of the world, and Caroline can't help but think of Klaus as she does, even though Tyler is the one she wishes was with her. She still wonders if she could have changed something, but she tries to let go.

They send Bonnie postcards every now and then, trying not to crowd her too much. She never responds, but Elena can't help but think that she appreicates the gesture.

...

They never offer to give Bonnie vampire blood, and she never asks. They know turning would be a betrayal she isn't capable of, a betrayal of her grams and the spirits and everything she is. They return to the small town where she was married and where her kids were raised for Bonnie's funeral, and cry in the graveyard, far enough from the actual funeral that no one notices them.

Bonnie is gone, but they will always be sisters.


End file.
